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abstract

I don’t own a lot of polishes I would truly call coral so I decided to go with a mani inspired by sea coral. I thought branching corals would be the easiest to use as inspiration as the patterns are really random and gave me a lot of freedom to create fun branchy shapes without worrying about it looking perfect.

I started with a dark blue glittery base as I thought it would be shimmery like the sea and then painted random coral inspired patterns over the top in a coral pink polish.

I liked the result and had fun doing something quite free and abstract but wish I had done something more interesting for the base – maybe a sponged base with a variety of shades of blue.

Anyway, now I’ve realised there’s a coral shaped colour hole in my polish collection, I’ve got a really great excuse to go out shopping and find the perfect coral polish!

I’d never even heard of the brushstroke technique before this challenge but was excited to have yet another new technique to try.
I looked at a whole load of photos after watching the tutorial by Gorgeois and thought about doing a variation on the idea, like only using shades of one colour but in the end decided just to follow the tutorial as it stands, using similar polishes as I loved the look Gorgeois created. It being the first time I’d tried this technique I had no idea how well it would come out or how difficult it would be and thought not being too adventurous would be best in this situation.

I really enjoyed doing the mani, it was simple and fun and looked equally good on both my right and left hand! (Not something I can often say – my right hand is usually a slightly wobbly version of my left…) I can see myself coming back to this technique and experimenting a bit more now I understand what’s involved and the effects that could be achieved.

I recently joined a Twin Post group which is new for me and I really like the idea of collaborating with other bloggers. This month’s theme for the group is Patterns and my twin blogger Stefanie from Fairly Charming and I were assigned abstract as our style of pattern.

I was a bit puzzled as to what to do with this very open them to begin with but Stefanie suggested doing something very free and unplanned. I loved the idea and thought we also needed something to tie our ideas together so we were still creating twinned manis. We decided on bright (possibly neon) colours, dots and squares to create a spontaneous abstract pattern each. I tried a neon yellow base first but the neon yellow looked so horrible with my skin tone I opted for a bright yellow creme instead.

So here’s what I came up with! I was quite pleased with the result and felt it was my first proper bit of nail art for this year and my free-handing skills will only improve if I give myself challenges like this!

I wanted to do something bright and colourful for this day of the challenge and was inspired by this vibrant painting which I thought would work well as nail art.

It gave me a chance to practise my stripes using a striping brush as well and although they’re not as perfect as I’d like them to be I think they’re getting better – plus I really need to keep practising as I’m just way too lazy to do a stripy mani like this with tape – all the waiting for drying time would drive me insane – so I need to get my striping brush technique sorted!

It was nice to have bright colours on my nails and I enjoyed wearing this mani.

The theme for the second day of the Crumpet Nail Tarts challenge was a mani featuring your most used colour polish. I tried looking back over my past manis to work out which was my most used polish but didn’t get very far and decided just to go with polishes which I love and therefore must have used a lot. Blue has always been my favourite colour to put on my nails and two of my all time favourite blues are Baker Street – Nails Inc and Matte Aqua – BYS. So those are the polishes featured in this mani.

I’m still hunting for the perfect pale blue – I thought I’d found it in the gorgeously pale Blueberry Muffin – Models Own this summer until I actually applied the polish and found out it was much like spreading blueberry muffin batter on my nails… I’m also looking for a nice metallic blue that will match my new car! Anyway, getting side-tracked here with my love for blue polishes, back to today’s mani…

I was going to do something floral but wanted a kind of spiky edgy floral and ended up with something vaguely reminiscent of cactus or maybe palm trees… I added the peachy/coppery outline to stop it being to try and complement the blue and make it stand out a bit more.

I quite like the result but wish I’d taken a bit more time and made my blue leaves/petals a bit neater.

I wasn’t going to participate in this day of the challenge as floral nails is something I’ve done before and I couldn’t think of a new technique to try or anything clever to do with the theme. Then as I was browsing through the Internet I came across this painting of some slightly abstract flowers which just inspired me and I wanted to give it a go.

I sponged a little bit of colour on top of my neutral base shade and then painted very rough flower petal shapes and finally added thin black sketchy lines. I think the bright colours were quite successful but the dark purple isn’t all that great as the black lines don’t stand out against it.